6 Steps to Develop a Powerful SaaS Content Marketing Strategy

How to create an impressive saas content marketing strategy in six steps

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Wale Adeyemi

Former Product-Led storytellers @ VEC

Welcome…

And thank you for checking out this article.

Today, I’ll share with you the same steps we used to develop our content marketing strategy, which now powers us to produce compelling SaaS content that attracts…

…and directly acquires qualified leads (and customers) without long SaaS sales funnel processes:  

P.S. Victor is our founder/lead strategist.

But first…

If you’re a founder, CxO, or marketing executive, it should interest you to know that interest in content marketing strategy has been on the rise:

But despite this rise, over 67% of B2B marketers still don’t have a documented content marketing strategy:

Source

That’s a lot if you ask me.

However, on the bright side…

…it means that if you take action and apply what I’ll share with you today, you’ll do better than most businesses who just create content here and there.

Well, growth doesn’t happen by chance.

If you fail to plan (by having a content strategy), you’re already setting up your content marketing efforts for failure.

So…

Not to be confused with a holistic SaaS content strategy, SaaS content marketing strategy involves having a clear, consistent, documented plan to develop solid, valuable, and relevant content that attracts, engages, and converts prospects into paying customers.

The keyword in the above definition is “Documented.”

And that’s because 33% of B2B Marketers who document their content marketing strategy reported higher levels of overall content marketing success.

Here’s the thing.

It’s not enough to have a strategy.

You need to document it in a way that is clear and visible to your team and all stakeholders what topics and pillars to build on.

For example, using the SaaS content topic clusters’ strategy model (which we developed and use):

Think about your journey from when you were a kid until this moment.

Going to school…

Getting a job…

And maybe, starting a family…

Everything you’ve done well had a plan to it, right? 

Content marketing for your SaaS business should be no different. 

Always start with a plan…

You can’t just wake up one morning and decide to create an article or make a video.

It’s a recipe for failure.

A SaaS content marketing strategy focuses your daily efforts and helps you figure out the role content marketing plays in growing your company.

This way, it’s easy to measure success, find out what’s working and improve it, stop what’s not working, and optimize where necessary.

According to a Content Marketing Institute’s study,  67% of B2B marketers say they don’t have a content marketing strategy because of their small team while 44% say it’s a lack of time.

All these are not strong enough reasons to neglect your content marketing strategy. 

If you want to see the results of your SaaS content writing efforts, having a strategy is a non-negotiable.

Now that you know why your business needs a content marketing strategy, let’s take a look at the tips to develop one that is simple and cost-effective.

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Everyone is not your customer.

In other words, you can’t sell your product to everybody – no matter how awesome it is.

It’s important to know who your ideal customers are.

To find out, you have to answer important questions like:

  • Who is my product for?
  • What problems do they have?
  • How can my product help them solve their problems?
  • Where can I find them?
  • What is their demographics – age, location, gender, income level, profession
  • What are their interests, motivation, challenges, desire?

Check out this B2B persona questions template from Product Marketing Alliance Team:

These are examples of important questions that will give you a deep insight into the kind of customers that will use your product.

And this helps you create content that addresses their needs.

To do this: 

  • Interview your existing clients
  • Check out Facebook groups
  • Leverage online communities – Reddit, Quora, etc. 
  • Look at software review sites like G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, etc.

The goal is to understand the everyday struggles your target audience goes through and how you can create content to help them.

Once you’ve gone through the process of researching your audience, you will already have a few ideas in mind.

But instead of creating content that speaks to all your target audiences, develop ideal customer personas (ICP).

An ICP is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience.

You give the person a name, demographics, interests.

You should also understand their goals, motivations, pain points, and buying patterns, etc.

You can even attach a random stock photography face.

The idea is to think, write, and speak to this buyer like he is real. 

It allows you to create content and marketing messages targeted specifically to them. 

For example, meet Zuhailo, one of our ideal customer personas:

Some content present on Victor Eduoh Consulting’s blog speaks directly to Zuhailo – because as a SaaS founder, he is our ideal customer. 

It’s why, when we apply our Product-led Storytelling formula when crafting content, SaaS founders enjoy them and reach out to become new customers: 

Does that help you to see the importance of creating ICPs to direct your SaaS content marketing strategy? 

Good. 

When creating your SaaS content marketing strategy, it’s important to set SMART goals.

But first…

What’s a  SMART goal?

The acronym SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Establishing SMART goals help you define what you’d like to accomplish with your strategy.

It gives you something to measure your success against.

For example, assuming you want to grow your traffic to 10,000 monthly visitors over the next three months.

A SMART goal will be to write and promote five content pieces each month.

Another one could be to write two guest blog posts each month.

Now, after three months, you can check your Google Analytics to find out if you reached your goal.

From the results, you can make smarter decisions.

You can set goals for demo requests, free trial sign-ups, or leads generated.

It doesn’t matter.

The important thing is to set SMART goals so you can measure the success of your content marketing efforts.

Now, we’ve gotten to the part where you plan and organize your content.

This is where you need to provide answers to questions like:

  • How often will you publish?
  • What kind of content will you create?
  • Is content creation going to be in-house or will you outsource it?
  • How will you promote your content?

Remember, you are not just creating a verbal content marketing strategy.

You are going to document it so everyone involved will get a clear idea of their goal.

Doing this helps you:

  • Focus your content efforts as your company grows.
  • Align all your writers – both in house and freelance.
  • Structure and prioritize the type of content to develop.

And the best way to plan and organize content is by using an editorial content marketing calendar.

CoSchedule comes in handy for this: 

Source

Coschedule defines content marketing calendar as:

“A content marketing editorial calendar is essentially a planning document that gives your team a plan of attack. 

Like a traditional editorial calendar, it gives you a bird’s-eye view of what is going on. 

However, it should be expanded to fit all the different marketing team channels.”

Furthermore, they mentioned it should:

  • Provide a place to generate post ideas and key topics.
  • Assign writing and other editorial tasks to key members of your team.
  • Create a publishing schedule that helps you maintain a consistent presence.
  • Allow you to make in-process adjustments with drag-and-drop ease.
  • Visualize your marketing strategy in a way that everyone can understand.
  • Act as a communication point to team members.

You can use tools like Google Sheet, Trello, or whatever works for you.

Just ensure you have a documented plan.

One thing is to create content…

Another one is to promote it.

You may have come across the famous 80/20 rule…

Where you spend 20% writing content and 80% promoting it.

Well, Tim Soulo, Head of Marketing at Ahrefs said he prefers the 101% rule.

Where he puts 101% effort in creating as well as promoting his content.

And I couldn’t agree more.

Think about it.

Gone were those days when you could write a 750-word document in less than an hour and it will rank on Google’s first page.

Nowadays, it’s no longer business as usual.

There’s a lot more competition.

And search engines, most especially Google, now prefer to rank only relevant and helpful content.

So do you still think spending only 20% writing content is going to cut it?

Of course not!

You have to put in time and effort in creating content – be it videos, articles, podcasts, or infographics.

As they say, “whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”

So, once you’ve created mind-blowing content, you need as many eyes as possible to see it.

Promoting it shamelessly is how you do that.

Because what’s the point of spending all that time and effort to create content if you will just sit and wait for people to find it?

Take us, for example. 

It wasn’t by chance that we rank on Google’s top spot for a keyword as difficult as SaaS content writing: 

And we didn’t bribe Google.

Besides it being a great piece of content, we promoted it massively.

Look…

Promoting your content these days is easy.

There are various ways to promote your content.

Here are examples:

  • Optimize for SEO to attract organic searchers
  • Promote with paid ads to reach more people
  • Promote on your social media platforms 
  • Post on relevant groups
  • Share with your email subscribers
  • Share content for online forums like Medium, Reddit, and Quora
  • Repurpose content for other channels like video, infographics, Slideshare
  • And finally, reach out to relevant blogs for backlinks.

Remember, creating great content and hoping for the best is not enough… 

You have to put more (and never-ending) effort into promoting it.

And this should fit right into your SaaS content marketing strategy plan.

Finally!

When all is said and done, there’s still the little aspect of analyzing results to measure the success of your content marketing strategy.

Remember those goals you set earlier, and now you have to check if you met and surpassed them.

You can also check what’s working and what’s not so you’ll know where to double your efforts.

Analyzing your results will help you make informed decisions when planning your next content marketing strategy.

Tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and inbuilt social analytics tools can help you determine how your content is performing.

Listen:

SaaS content marketing is not a sprint.

It’s a marathon.

The goal isn’t instant gratification but a long-term reward.

So, when starting, don’t focus on immediate results, but you won’t see it. 

Instead, try out different strategies, measure your results, find out why something is or isn’t working, and implement the necessary changes. 

All these require continuous time, energy, and effort. 

A SaaS content marketing strategy is a crucial part of content marketing goals.

And as you’ve discovered, it’s not as hard as it may sound.

Once you follow the steps outlined above, you’ll develop a better content marketing strategy for your business.

At Victor Eduoh Consulting, we’re not selling SaaS. 

But SaaS and B2B companies trust us because our content helps them to:

To build an audience…

Build trust in our brand…

Demonstrate your expertise…

Show how their product solves prospects’ pain points…

Grow traffic…

Generate trial users and product-qualified leads…

And convert them into happy clients.

To do any of that, we, too, have a solid strategy built on topic clusters and Product-led Storytelling. 

It’s what engineers our content pieces to attract (and convert) without long sales funnel processes: 

Ready to create a formidable SaaS content marketing strategy? 

Apply the tips I’ve shared…

Or contact us to help you remove the guesswork.

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Wale Adeyemi

Former Product-Led storytellers @ VEC

Wale was a former Product-Led storytellers at VEC

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The Product-Led Storytelling B2B SaaS Content Studio. A VEC LLC., company, headquartered in Sheridan, Wyoming.

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